CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
Menu
Research dossier · People & Ideas

Henry Persons

Confederate Army officer, lawyer and politician (1834-1910)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 26, 2026
Entity authorityQ1607152
Source-derived summary

Joseph "Henry" Persons (January 30, 1834 – June 17, 1910) was an American politician, lawyer and soldier.

Early life

Persons was born near Smarrs, Georgia, in Monroe County; however, his family moved to Talbot County, Georgia in 1836. He attended the University of Georgia (UGA) in Athens and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1855.

Civil War

During the American Civil War, Persons served as a cavalry captain in the Third Georgia regiment of the Confederate States Army.

Postbellum

After the war, he was elected as a Representative to the 46th United States Congress as an Independent Democrat. Persons lost his bid for re-election in 1880 and returned to Geneva, Georgia. He studied law, gained admittance to the state bar in 1885 and began practicing law in Talbotton, Georgia.

After his political service, Persons served as a UGA trustee from 1894 until 1910. He died that year in Talbotton and was buried in that city's Rose Hill Cemetery.

References

United States Congress.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Henry Persons” is confederate Army officer, lawyer and politician (1834-1910). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Henry, Persons and Confederate, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1834, 1910, 1836, 1855—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Henry, Persons and Confederate is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “confederate Army officer, lawyer and politician (1834-1910)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1607152. The first chronological checks are 1834, 1910, 1836 and 1855.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Henry Persons”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Henry Persons primary sources, Henry Persons archive and Henry research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Henry Persons”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Henry Persons” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.